Recently the government (I think it was the
Bureau of the Excruciatingly Obvious) announced that the best
way to cut tobacco use was to increase taxes on tobacco products.
Of course, that's the government's answer to nearly everything.
I suppose you could say the same thing about alcohol, newspapers,
Cheez Whiz or Insulin. I have to ask, then, is the government
interested in the health of the nation or using people's addictions
to raise revenue? "The health of the nation, of course!
Dead people can't pay taxes!", you say, and you might actually
be right. I wasn't paying attention. There are those who argue
that the government shouldn't be involved at all, that the Free
Market (also known as "Supply and Demand" or "Fred"
to its friends) should decide all business affairs. This is what
Adam Smith (or Adam West, or Adam Ant) referred to as "the
invisible hand of the free market", as all the good names
were taken. This essentially means that an unregulated free market
is the best way to run an economy or, if you want to sell crack
to first graders it's no one's business but your own. Just don't
try to sell them peanut products, or you're in for a world of
hurt.

The Wall Street Journal is a very serious
paper with no funnies that rarely runs headlines like "Raccoon
Wins Lottery" or "Hilary and Elvis in UFO Love Tryst".
Their headlines usually refer to such page turning articles as
"The Bolivian Economy: Can it Survive the Recession?"
and "Wall Street Insiders Look to Tin Futures". They're
considered the leading experts on all things economic, so I never
read it. Having invested heavily in "Hat Squad" paraphernalia
in the early 1990s I thought my financial future was secure,
but it just goes to show you how fickle the market can be.

What, then, do leading economists say? Well,
since economists are two notches below astrologers (and three
below meteorologists) when it comes to predicting the future,
I say "who cares"?

We then asked tobacco executive R.J. "Buzz"
Raleigh for a comment. Raleigh, as you may know, was the first
big tobacco executive to declare that "catchy slogans will
distract people from the fact that these things are killing them
like mosquitoes on a windshield". This was the prevailing
thought until an unknown marketing genius* discovered that ads
showing pictures of young, hip, healthy people enjoying life
to the fullest would do an even better job.

"Tobacco has been around here a lot longer
than the government has", Raleigh confided, sitting behind
the desk in his spacious, money lined office. "And we'll
be here long after they're gone. Think of us as cockroaches."

We assured him that most people already did,
which seemed to please him. Lighting a cigar off the head of
a small animal, he leaned back and reminisced.

"When I started in this business, we
couldn't produce cigarettes, cigars and pipe tobacco fast enough!
I remember World War II, when we put cigarettes in Red Cross
packages... there was nothing more comforting to a gut-shot soldier
than to have a buddy light up a smoke and stick it into whatever
orifice he still had intact. Then came the fifties. Now THAT
was a golden age! Cigarette ads everywhere, People giving festive
cartons of cigarettes for Christmas, celebrity endorsements...
Remember the slogan, "The healthy way is six packs a day!"?
That was mine! Then came the sixties! The Surgeon General comes
out and say smoking is BAD for you! Can you imagine that? I mean,
the guy claims to be the Surgeon General, but he wears an ADMIRAL'S
uniform! Would YOU trust someone like that? Look, just because
people DIE doesn't mean tobacco did it! People die every day!
Our industry did a study showing that more people died from being
hit by pieces of Skylab than were killed by smoking. Really!"

When pressed on the source of this study,
Raleigh would only cite "a very wealthy scientist living
in the Bahamas". "That's not the point, really. We
find that increasing taxes on smokers only puts an unfair burden
on a small, oppressed segment of society. What's next? Nuns?!"
We left his office convinced that he had a point, but that Thorazine
might help. Is this an issue best left to the Invisible Hand
of the Free Market? Only the astrologers can tell.

*Studies show that the morals on Madison Avenue
are even lower than those in the tobacco industry. Selling crack
to first graders wouldn't provoke any moral qualms at all in
the average advertising executive. In fact, the agency of Louden,
Himmler, Stemkowski and Fultz has already copyrighted the slogan,
"When you're out of Whack, you're out of Crack!".